If you don't want to take responsibility to insure that your designs are implemented according to yours and your client's wishes, then you should be out of the project at this point. Any good contractor will want a working relationship with the designer. Your client contract should specifically state your level of involvment in the project. You should also have liability insurance. This is not meant to be negative advice. If you lack experience, and your contractor has more experience, you can learn a lot from listening and adjusting your plans if what they say makes sense to you. Don't let your ego get caught up in a conflict that is unecessary and fruitless. Your client's high level satisfaction will get you more work through referal and you can chalk this one up to learning experience and charge more next time.

The only way you can ensure your design is implemented as you intended is by construction oversight/project management. To release yourself from this vital step is to give up autonomy over your design. It's your choice. As miss rumphius states, your contract with your client should spell out the degree and limits of your responsibility. In my business, I prepare ONLY the designs - the clients contract with landscape contractors personally (although I do provide recommendations) or install the designs themselves. I still retain oversight over the installation if contracted and am available for assistance/questions if DIY - it is written into my contract with appropriate fees disclosed for this part of my design services.

I have to admit I am becoming concerned with tone of your current postings. It appears you are taking on projects that exceed your level of experience and capacity. While I understand your desire to establish and make a name for yourself in this business AND make money doing so, I think you need to step back and make a realistic assessment of your abilities and skill level and don't bite off more than you can chew. Anything less than 100% and careful attention to all the myriad details involved is not going to result in client satisfaction and the potential for more referrals and I just don't see that evidenced in your posts. Going too big too fast is a sure recipe for failure.

I'm having a hard time understanding what you are trying to communicate.
If I'm not understanding your path of thought , then how do you expect a landscape contractor to understand what you want and then take full responsibility for it ?

Based on the last several posts that you have made it appears that you do not have the experience to be handling the projects that you describe.

I applaud you for pushing the envelope, but quite frankly based on your posts you shouldn't even be in the stationary shop quite yet.

If I was a licensed contractor I would run away,,,, and fast.

There is a lot of assuming going on here. I have my own assumptions as well.

One assumption that has been made is that any good contractor is going to want a working relationship with the designer. Not true. A good contractor is going to assess the design and the designer and decide whether he/she is going to be an assett or burden in getting the job done. Which goes to the second assumption that the designer should have autonomy over his/her design. That only is true if the design is good and workable between the client and the contractor. The third assumption is that the designer's plan is of high value with or without the designer being able to manage the job to completion. The built work is the final product.

The plan is only part of the process and never is it complete enough to garanty an exact outcome. Some well drawn, well detailed, and well documented plans go a long way toward that. Some are not much more than some nice ideas and general lists and configurations of plantings that are not all that clear. This is why some designers, like Mich, get paid a percentage of the value of the built work. It is because they MAKE it happen by taking control, managing, and applying experience, expertise, and sometimes force to get it done all the way to completion. That has value. If you turn that part, that responsibility, over to the contractor, he/she earns the compensation not the person that drew the plan.

Value thence compensation. Position is not value on its own. Anyone who pays a percentage to a designer who draws a plan and splits is a fool and fools tend to part with all of their money long before they hire landscape designers so don't count on finding many.

Until you or me or Mich or Ink or anyone else can get paid well as a designer, we have to make ourselves valuable. The only way is to make the job happen. Most of the designers making a living on this board are designing and also installing. Some do it with their own hands and a pickup, some do it in a small design/build landscape company, and some do it by being contracted as project managers. Few, if any, make much of a living drawing plans and handing the plan and responsibility to others. There simply is no value in it to a consumer.

Well said.

>Few, if any, make much of a living drawing plans and handing the plan and responsibility to others. There simply
is no value in it to a consumer.laag, I'm having some problems with this statement - would you care to elaborate?

I have to agree with Laag saying there's no value for the consumer for the designer simply to design and have no interaction or involvement with the construction.

It's like a painter only doing the preliminary drawings, then handing them off to some else to actually paint them. Of course, the one painting will not interpret the designs the same way, and thus the painting will come out differently than originally intended by the designer.

Same as for landscape design and construction. Although measurements, specifications, materials, plants used, placement and all may be written down, the contractor will always have minor questions about the subtleties within the design. If you're not there, then the contractor will have to make decisions that will (perhaps) adversely affect the finished product.

If you don't want to follow through with your designs and make sure they come out as what you and your clients wish, then maybe you should consider another career. Not to be insulting, but sometimes deep-down self evaluation may be needed to find if this is right for you.

-Audric

I thnk this guy may be setting us up. Meanwhile thank you all. Imagine what a resource this could be if we could be sure that we were all genuine. I think this naif' 'califajoy' is a plant. Be careful.

What I mean is that there are a lot of people that hear that people make ten percent or more of the price of a built landscape while in the roll of landscape designer. Many make the assumption that a person drawing a plan showing a house with trees, shrubs, patios, walkways, and such sits down and dreams these things up with an artistic vision and love of plants. Then all ooh and ahhh at the brilliant plan, hand over ten percent, and then hunt down a contractor to build it. The contractor will then recognize the genius of the plan, the genius of the person behind the plan, and cast aside all of his/her own experience to follow the plan exactly how it is supposed to be built feeling the honor of being able to be part of the great landscape that the client purchased.

That ten percent has to come from somewhere. Let's follow the money trail. First, what is the client getting in the end? A landscape. What goes into the cost of creating that landscape? Cost of materials, cost of labor (skilled and unskilled, cost of use of equipment, and the cost of managing all of it.

Drawing a plan is similar to skilled labor. It takes experience (wide ranging from little to lots), it takes some skill (again a wide range from little to lots), and it takes time (little to lots). Because each of these aspects of designing a landscape range so much from little experience, low drafting skills, and quickly put together ideas to deep levels of experience, high drafting skills, and lots of productive time put into each project, the value of one designer can not be assumed to resemble that of another.

Then when you look at the price of having a landscape built you have to follow the money. The most money changes hands purchasing labor and materials. This is what contractors get up to go to work for every morning. The more material that moves through his hands with a markup on it, the more money he makes. The more laborers he has producing billable hours, the more money he makes. In order for him to do this every day, he has to make sure that the materials and laborers are where they should be when they should be and that all is flowing in a productive manner. He keeps records and analyzes them all the time so that he knows how long it takes to do what, what materials he can get, what they cost, how soon he can get them, where he can store them, how he can ship them, and how to build and price the landscape. He has to know what other contractors are on the site, what they are doing, what they are going to be doing, how he is going to affect them, and how they are going to affect him. He often has to bid against other contractors, so he must be competitive or he will sit at home.

He also has to land jobs. Part of landing jobs means taking the time to price out jobs taking lots of time without knowing whether or not he'll get the job. That costs money, but is an investment in marketing. As with all investments, some are winners and some are losers, so...

If you feel you have quality control issues regarding the finished installation, the only way to adjust that is to offer installation services as part of your business.

If you feel that you, as an independent designer, have the ability to dictate how somone else conducts their business, well, how about asking the contractor to suggest ways they feel you could do your job a little better? How would you feel about that?

Personally, I tend to sympathize with the contractor. I've worked with too many designers with too much ego and not enough ability. For the most part, the contractors I've run across are just trying to do a job and make some money in the process.

Of course, if you weren't making money doing designs, would you continue?

Thank you for answer. Some gave me unfriendly answer, that is ok, the rason I post my question, because I want to learn from you, when I learn, I grow, when I grow, I can help others.

Almost no client ask me for supervision, I feel upset that contractor used cheap materials, rough finish.

I refer these contracotrs to clients, they got the job, but they did not follow the plans. I learn I shouldn't refer contractor to client; unless contractor refer me to client, then I can work with contractor closely, I will be able to oversee the job and ensue the quality, what do you think?

That you got a LOOOOOOOOOONG way to go.

We still seem to be making assumptions and one of the assumptions I'm pulling out of this discussion is the requirement for a contractor to be involved. While we tend to think of landscape design as primarily a two part process - the development of the design and the professional implementation of the design - there are a lot of modifications to that process, one of which is the ommission of the second step. Granted, many if not most large scale landscapes will have a contractor involved, but is that a requirement? I don't think so.

In the same manner that some homeowners undertake the construction or remodelling of their home themselves, many also take on the implementation of their landscape design themselves. They may job out portions that exceed their comfort or skill level, but the lion's share of the implementation they do without professional assistance. And I'm not sure we can consider these to be isolated cases - they tend to make up the bulk of my client base.

So all of this leads me back to laag's statement: "Few, if any, make much of a living drawing plans and handing the plan and responsibility to others. There simply is no value in it to a consumer." I'd have to disagree. If that is what the client wants and is expecting, then of course there is value to it. They have contracted for, helped to develop and purchased a design plan that they will implement themselves. The designer's responsibility once the plan is delivered is then abrogated, although it does not have to be, if the client prefers to have ongoing involvement. Some do, some don't. Yes, you can lose autonomy of the design, but that is more a matter of restraining one's ego - it is afterall the CLIENT'S landscape/garden involved. They had a need which I filled through my services and for which they paid me, ergo value.

I apologize for hijacking califajoy's thread, but he/she did receive some well thought-out responses and I just needed to clarify this issue.

Gardengal,
I think that you have created an extremely valuable and unique landscape design service custom tailored to a growing segment of our communities, and that is the Do it yourself crowd.

In my humble ( a- hum ! ) opinion this is sort of a newish niche ( say that fast 3 times ) within the landscape design industry.

I imagine that you can be somewhat flexible with this type of 'DIY' service and offer the bare bones of the plan and or perhaps make a few site visits or if the client finds himself over his head you might have the option of coming to the rescue and offering a service that Laag describes above.

I'm a control person, not so much in that I have to tell people what to do ( though my beau would agrue with that ) but I do form very specific visions for my/ our designs and I need to see that particular vision executed in a very specific way.
So the Construction Administration role that Laag describes above is crucial to my business, it is also crucial to the economics of my business as well.

In the very next breath, I am kinda burnt out in dealing with lots of people every day. The phones are constantly ringing, Organizing and checking in on special custom made pieces, verifying this and OK'ing that and generally being on top of it all the time takes a toll on me , especially when running a half dozen jobs concurrently.

So I LUST for your type of set up, The DIY setup. But then I reconcile with myself that the project may not come out as I / we envisioned and that still itches a place in my heart.

Oh to have my cake and eat it too.... with pina coladas on the side.

Few does not mean none. How much does a plan cost? How many are done and paid for in a year? How much is left over after all related expenses? Unless that adds up to at least $40k, it is a part time job rather than making a living. I do not doubt that Gardengal and others are making a living, but they would not be the majority of people limiting their scope of work to designing and handing off the plan.

I have not personally experienced any of the DIY crowd to be forthcoming with money to invest in design. Those that think they can build anything tend to think that they can design it, too. I think it is great that someone is making a living in this niche. I just don't think it is a big niche.

I have to say that the most gratifying part of landscape business, to me, is not the completion of a plan. It's the actual construction of the landscape that really excites me. You spend many hours (undoubtedly) labouring over the plans, making sure every little detail is covered, and then it is brought to life right before your eyes.

Although I can't say that I've done many (if any) complete "from design to construction" projects. But I do organize many concert nights for my school as part of the Senior Music Council. We plan out everything from the different acts, the dates, themes, stage backgrounds, orders, groups, etc etc. After, we have to make sure everything goes as it should, from the organization of jobs and tasks to ticket sales to the construction of the backdrop.

If we were to simply plan the evenings and nothing else--giving the plans to another group to carry out with no supervision-- I know that the evening would not go as expected. A whole slew of little things pop up, and someone has to be there to make the decisions.

A little bit more on the landscaping issue, I lust to have Michelle's setup--being able to order custom stone fountains and urns, beautifully crafted wrought-iron pieces, to be able to go "all the way" with a project and not be forced to make-do with cement and chicken wire, or with discounted Home-Depot arbours. But as it stands, I'm confined to the latter for the time being.

Califajoy, from your many other posts it seems that your landscaping business is not doing too badly. It's a privilege to be able to deal with such large-scale, high-quality projects. To be able to see them constructed is another honour, to supervize them and to make sure that everything goes as you planned should not be a grievance if you truly love your job.

-Audric

careful what you wish for......

dreams really do come true

; ~ )

I guess the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence... but once it becomes your grass it just shrivels up and dies on you.

-Audric

A suggestion on how to approach this problem... If you are specifying materials that are difficult to source, you may find it easier to include furnishing said items to the contractor as part of your scope of work, and have this be part of your initial contract with the client. I often use this approach with clients/contractors who may need the assistance, and find that it makes it a smoother relationship with the contractor who then knows where hard to find items will be coming from, and doesn't have to waste time pricing/sourcing them. In my own case, this usually involves specialty plants and pottery, or may also include sculpture or garden ornament. In cases where I am not actually doing the installation, at a minimum I like to include consultation time to occasionally inspect work progress at important job phases. If you aren't personally knowledgeable about the contractor's reputation, it may be especially important to require approved sample submittals, inspect underground work prior to it being covered up, and use and enforce good written specifications. In the past, I have had problems with contractors who skimped on proper soil preparation, shoddy drainage and irrigation work, substituted lesser cost soil amendments, quick and dirty planting techniques as opposed to specified planting pit dimensions, etc. These are all items that require an aware client to checkup on, or pay for someone's time to inspect, as even licensed and bonded landscape contractors with good reputations have cut corners when they underbid jobs or are faced with difficulties. I don't mean to tar all contractors with this brush, but I have seen it enough to know that it is very common. As a result, I prefer to form good working relations with contractors whose work I respect, and also rely on them during the design process to get feedback on better ways to detail for a more cost effective end result. I don't expect them to source difficult to find plant species, but instead include this within my own scope of work. As well, I prefer to be on-site to supervise spotting of all plant materials and planting, so that I can guarantee that it is done right.

These are a few minimum designer/contractor interface items that I have found useful in my own practice to get the best end product, and prefer to work with contractors who are interested in maintaining a good reputation of doing quality work, and bringing problems to my attention as the situation requires. Of course, on lower budget jobs there often isn't the money available to supervise, and I find it pays to inform the customer that they will have to take this role on themselves, and not look juat for the lowest bidder. It often gets down to actually checking references of both designers and contractors, to get a better feel for level of experience and how they work. A designer with actual installation experience can often benefit the client by being able to specify shortcuts that don't hurt...

I list the special materials and phone number in plans, I told clients to follow, but they forgot or maybe they concern about budget.

Some landscape contractors(choosed by clients), show their attitude to me, what else can I say? clients do not pay me extra, so...
people love my design, I see my design into construction, but I don't see quality.

I have one very big project, clients have good taste, I will get pay to oversee the job, but this time I am scared to refer contractor to clients, none of them follow the plans exactly, they have no time(and lazy) to locate plants, the nursery ship as is, I want triple trunk King palm, they substitute to Queen... I don't want it happen again. I am going to interview new contractor, set up meeting, see their professionalizm, they said they will pay me if I help them get the job, so I am going to have two income from client and contractor, what do you think about this arrangement?

Not ethical. You are being paid by the homeowner to take the responsibility to oversee the job. That means you have to make the work get done the way it is supposed to. When you take money from a contractor to get him the job, you are no longer serving the needs of the homeowner. You not only have not earned the money they are paying you, but you have broken the most simple ethic.

You complain of contractors not having the character to work responsibly? Perhaps the nursery gave the contractor $100 to sell the Queen Palms instead of the King. Now you will do the same?

Can this be for real?

I think Ink might be on to something.

Laag,
How's this for a convoluted analogy " Anna Banana "

ring a bell ?

This is one fudge covered banana that needs to split.

In my humble opinion, the homeowner assumes the role of GC by hiring the designer separately from the installer, and is ultimately responsible for the results. He/She assumed responsibility for the landscape plan compliance. The designer should point out the pitfalls of taking on this role and should attempt to sell the owner on paying him/her to supervise.

If successful in selling this additional service (perhaps for a percentage of the bulk), then if the contractor insists on installing a plant that is not on the plan, it IS the designer's fault for allowing it to happen, and he/she is financially responsible for the remedy--in my humble opinion.

I am not a lawyer; I am an MBA with 22 years experience dealing with engineers, contracts/specs and crews, as well as a garden design hobbyist.

Hm. Anna Banana, or a disgruntled banana pup finding its way back into the garden? Ring a bell?

Ooooo, we should all be very very careful now, we're being watched !
This lovely letter ( below ) arrived in my email box this morning.
Someone might explain to Sybil what the word convoluted analogy means.
Me thinks she doesn't get it.

___________________________________

Dear Ms Derviss
 As you well know I am not a contributor to any of the GW forums although I still keep an eye on the goings on. I take exception to this post (below) and am getting totally sick of your periodic implications that some posts are coming from me. You are stepping very close to making libelous statements and it's time you backed off. I do not post on these forums. Stop implying that I do.

Anna Gresham

whoah! talk about defensive! why does she feel she needs to "keep an eye on the goings on..." ? and why not post her comment here instead of sending you an email privately? I'm not in on the inside goings on, it seems...

Anna has a point Michelle, she operates a business in New Zealand that depends on cyber connections. She, like a number of people watch the "goings on" here to keep abreast of what is current. Although it would be in her interest to provoke a discussion such as the one above, she is not the only suspect. Any writer or commentator on what is current in the gardening/design world could have got us at it in this way. Although our webmaster is vigilant when it comes to bickering and differences of opinion there is not much done to filter out abusers such as this. From my knowledge of the lady in question she is not implicated in the califajoy scenario.

Holy Crap Tony,
save it.
I don't need a refresher course on the wonders of Annas pedagogic home taught landscaping correspondence course from down under .

It was an analogy - get it ? As in ' similarity in some respects betweens things otherwise unlike' . Example : a partial resemblance - or perhaps even more poignant using the words paranoid and nut case is another appropro example.

Not convinced Michelle, sorry.
Anyway it may interest you to know that calafajoy is still contemplating the purchase of Vectorworks 11 (see LD forum today) as he/she was more than a month ago, perhaps our sneaky friend is connected with said software somehow?

Calfajoy,

Let's assume that your design was appropriate for the conditions. If you refer your client to a contractor, you are assuming responsibility for that contractor's conduct as far as your client is concerned.

Is there any way out of it? Not without a disclaimer, in which case your client might ask why you are recommending someone you don't trust. I would ask the same question.

If you don't know a reputable contractor, inisist that your client hire one independently. That way if they won't follow your instructions, it's your client's problem.

Ryan